If you are a baby boomer, you remember that sound. It is the sound that comics page megastar Charlie Brown would release whenever he lived through a situation with a maddening, please-don't-do-this-again familiarity, such as Lucy pulling away the football every time Charlie tried to kick it.

Arrghhhh!

It is the sound Charlie might make in Syracuse when, say, our civic leaders wonder why the Syracuse Chiefs don't draw very well. Many of those same civic leaders, ignoring a national trend, happily spent millions of public dollars on building our new baseball stadium in the middle of a blacktop sea on the outskirts of the city.

Arrghhhh!

It is the sound Charlie might have offered about countless planning curiosities - such as killing neighborhood fabric by building ever-bigger, ever-more-faceless drugstores on delicate city corners, or the way a stone poorhouse that was one of Onondaga County's oldest public buildings was torn down to make way for what is now a weedy lot, or the way Interstate 81, built behind the happy title of "slum control, " created a noisy, ugly wall between our downtown and our university.

If you happen to be in that downtown, and you drive just to the west of that interstate, you will come to the corner of Townsend and Water streets. There you will find the achingly evocative facade of the old Brennan Motor complex, one of the last remnants of Erie Canal-related architecture in Syracuse, a complex used in the 19th century to build engines for boats on the nearby canal.

The main building has rounded corners, arched windows and a cupola. The walls are made of ivy-covered brick. A brick-lined alley leads to a courtyard in the rear. The complex is immediately across the street from the equally evocative Smith Restaurant Supply - a place, by the way, that sells wonderful coffee.

In Boston, in Portland, in Charleston, in Seattle, this wouldn't even be a matter for speculation: Downtown buildings on the level of the Brennan Motor complex would be brought back for apartments, for office space, for storefronts, for a warm cafe or restaurant. Developers would be wrestling on the corner for the chance.

Thursday morning, you could see the Brennan cupola from the window of the Common Council chambers in Syracuse City Hall, the same chambers in which the Syracuse Landmark Preservation Board was listening to a proposal to knock the complex down.

To make way for a parking lot.

To be used by potential workers inside some offices in a structure known as the "Nynex building, " which - to put it nicely - is not exactly monumental architecture.

Indeed, some might say the whole plan is upside-down.

The landmark board will hold a June 7 public hearing on the plan, where people will be free to express their thoughts, including this one:

Arrghhhh!

Even as we scream, it is only fair to express some base-line truths. Carnegie Management has an option to buy the old Brennan property, now owned by Supa Inc. It is Carnegie that wants to level the place for parking. History-loving designers and architects who have toured the buildings don't make any bones about it: Portions of the buildings are in tough shape. It would take a lot of money to bring them back.

It would be worth it. Accomplished restoration architect Randy Crawford and Dennis Connors, curator at the Onondaga Historical Association, point to these buildings as precious, irreplaceable survivors of a Syracuse industrial era intertwined with the canal, an era that carried into the great years of the railroads.

And Crawford, who prepared a report that underlined the importance of the complex for the landmark board, said he is aware of several companies that showed serious interest in reopening those buildings.

In essence, Crawford says:

Please don't knock them down.

"You could create a very nice historic district to anchor the eastern part of downtown, " Crawford said.

He seconds a point made by Doug Sutherland, a developer who advises Mayor Matt Driscoll on matters of downtown design. Sutherland, who also loves those buildings, says they are a prime example for the need for the "enhanced tax credits" for rehabilitation that the state Legislature is now considering.

If you want to form your own opinion on the demolition request, here's one way to do it: Go to Saturday's big tour of the best and brightest in our new Syracuse wave of downtown housing and take a few minutes to drive to the corner of Townsend and Water. Stop at Smith's and buy yourself a bag of fresh-ground coffee, and pause to admire the Brennan facade.

Then imagine that corner as a parking lot.

At that moment, if you wish, feel free to cry out:

Arrghhhh!

Sean Kirst is a columnist with The Post-Standard. His columns appear Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Email him at skirst@syracuse.com, visit his blog and forum at www.syracuse.com/kirst or write to him in care of The Post-Standard, Clinton Square, Syracuse 13221.